The question whether elites contribute constructively to the process of European integration has become more crucial today in times of increasing Euroscepticism and populist opposition to the European Union in the member states. In this article we venture off beaten paths and focus on a hitherto much less investigated segment of society, business elites, and particularly on their attitudes towards the process of European integration. For this purpose, we focus on a cross-national survey of business elites with data from ten European countries. We show that levels of support for European integration are uneven across countries. At the same time, applying regression analysis, we find that the ways in which business elites shape their attitudes towards the European Union are not so different from those of public opinion, as individual-level factors are more influential on their attitudes than are the structural properties of their companies.

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商界精英与欧洲一体化：真的是蜜月故事吗？

在欧洲怀疑主义和民粹主义反对欧盟成员国日益增多的今天，精英是否对欧洲一体化进程做出建设性贡献的问题变得更加重要。在这篇文章中，我们冒险走出了人迹罕至的道路，关注迄今为止调查较少的社会阶层、商业精英，尤其是他们对欧洲一体化进程的态度。为此，我们重点使用来自十个欧洲国家的数据对商业精英进行了跨国调查。我们表明，各国对欧洲一体化的支持程度是不均衡的。同时，通过回归分析，我们发现商界精英塑造对欧盟态度的方式与舆论并没有太大区别，